NUMBERS, FACTS AND TRENDS SHAPING THE WORLD

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION ON THIS REPORT: Amy Mitchell, Director of Journalism Research Dana Page, Communications Manager 202.419.4372 www.pewresearch.org

RECOMMENDED CITATION: Pew Research Center, March 2014, “State of the News Media 2014: News Video on the Web: A Growing, if Uncertain, Part of News.”

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About This Report
This report is a component of the State of the News Media 2014, the eleventh edition of the annual report by the Pew Research Center examining the landscape of American journalism. This year’s study includes special reports about the revenue picture for news, the growth in digital reporting, the role of acquisitions and content sharing in local news and how digital video affects the news landscape. In addition, it provides the latest data on audience, economic, news investment and ownership trends for key sectors of news media. The full study is available online and includes a database with news industry trend data and a slideshow about how news functions on social media. This report is a collaborative effort based on the input and analysis of the following individuals. Find related reports about trends in journalism at pewresearch.org/journalism.

About Pew Research Center
Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world. It does not take policy positions. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. The center studies U.S. politics and policy views; media and journalism; internet and technology; religion and public life; Hispanic trends; global attitudes and U.S. social and demographic trends. All of the center’s reports are available at www.pewresearch.org. Pew Research Center is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts. Alan Murray, President Michael Dimock, Vice President, Research Elizabeth Mueller Gross, Vice President Paul Taylor, Executive Vice President, Special Projects Andrew Kohut, Founding Director

News Video on the Web: A Growing, if Uncertain, Part of News
Momentum around digital news video picked up in 2013. More than six in ten U.S. adults now watch videos online – and roughly half of those, 36% of all U.S. adults, watch news videos, according to new Pew Research Center survey data. This is roughly the same percentage of Americans who now get news from Facebook or watch cable news channels regularly.12 And, while no firms break out digital video advertising revenue specifically for news, the category of digital advertising as a whole is up sharply, growing 44% from 2012 to 2013, to an estimated $4.15 billion, according to eMarketer.

Percentage of Americans Who Watch News Video Online
% of U.S. Adults

Technological improvements lowering the Do Not 63% barrier to entry, both for the audience and Watch News Video those in the news business, have spurred a 27% wave of new entrants into the digital news video space. With 36% of U.S. adults recording Source: Pew Research Center 2013 Digital Video Survey videos on their cellphones, citizens are playing PEW RESEARCH CENTER a valuable role in the news process, sharing videos of eyewitness moments around news events small and large. And both digital news outlets like Vice Media as well as legacy outlets like NBC took steps to develop approaches to digital video content in 2013. But a closer look suggests that digital news video does not necessarily have a clear or simple path to becoming a major form of news in the future. Producing high-quality video – or even streaming it live – can be costly, and the payoff is not clear. Video advertising, while on the rise, amounts to just 10% of all digital ad revenue and just 2% of total ad revenue. Large distributors of video content like YouTube already account for a large portion of video watching on the web, and a hefty share of the revenue. And for traditional legacy providers – local TV stations and national networks – most of their audience and revenue are still in the legacy platforms, which may reduce these companies’ desire to invest in digital video in a big way. Non-digital news revenue on local and national broadcasts, as well as cable, now amounts to $15 billion a year.

Watch Online Video

Watch News Video 36%

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Pew Research Center. “The Role of News on Facebook.” Oct. 24, 2013. Pew Research Center. “In Changing News Landscape, Even Television is Vulnerable.” Sept 27, 2012.

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On the consumer side, while television viewing has been the most popular form of news consumption for decades, it is still not clear how much that will translate to high levels of videobased news online. The growth rate has slowed considerably since 2007 (the year after YouTube was purchased by Google and the year the iPhone was released). From 2007 to 2009 the percentage of adults watching online news video increased 27%, but the next four years (2009 to 2013) saw just 9% growth. It is true that mobile devices are accounting for a larger share of video viewing, which could bring another spike in growth, but at the moment that increase remains only a hypothetical. This report examines the state of digital video – from the audience, to the revenue, to developments in content creation from both citizens and news organizations. It includes original survey data and a new audit of 32 local television news sites, as well as aggregation and analysis of a host of outside data. Over all, it finds that online video is clearly becoming a part of the news media landscape. News is a part of what people watch online, and, more than ever, the public is a part of creating this news. But online video is also very much still in development, and the revenue opportunities, while they exist, are complicated. Some who have moved most powerfully into this space are digital natives, not tethered to legacy platforms that still account for a good portion of their audience and revenue. Among the other findings:  The young are the heaviest consumers of online videos and are also strong consumers of digital news videos. Nine in ten 18-to-29-year-olds watch online videos, and almost half, 48%, watch online news videos. That is equal to the 49% of 30-to-49-yearolds who watch online news video and outpaces the 27% of 50-to-64-year-olds and 11% of those 65 and older who do the same. User-generated video content can play a critical role around breaking news, although a fairly small segment of Americans produce and share those videos. Pew Research Center survey data finds that 12% of social media users have posted their own videos of news events on social networking sites. 3 Further, 11% of online news consumers have submitted their own content (including videos, photos, articles or opinion pieces) to news organizations or blogs. Factoring in those who are not online news consumers or social media users, this translates to 7% of U.S. adults posting their own news videos to social media and 7% submitting content to news sites.

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In the survey, this question was asked of social networking site users who also got news online.

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For now, the digital video market is small – about $4 billion, a tiny fraction of the broader digital ad market. And of that $4 billion, Google – through YouTube – accounts for nearly a quarter. And Facebook, which quickly jumped to the top in display ad revenue, just entered the digital video market in early 2014. That leaves a narrow space for news publishers to compete with other digital video services, such as Hulu and ESPN. The last year saw some major investments in digital news production. Vice Media’s launch of a digital news channel in early 2014, NBC’s acquisition of Stringwire in 2013 and HuffPost Live’s overseas expansion point in the same direction: News organizations are becoming more aggressive about video on the internet (though there have been stumbles along the way). Local TV news outlets are moving into digital video, but at varying rates. A Pew Research audit of 32 local TV news websites finds that all but four offer video on their homepages, but the amounts range from 92% of all homepage stories to just 6%. Roughly half, 14 of the 32, offer live streaming of their broadcast programs. In addition, 24 of the 32 have mobile apps with video watching capabilities in both the Android and Apple stores, and 18 have YouTube channels, though, again, the activity level there varied greatly.

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The Audience for Digital News Videos
About six in ten U.S. adults (63%) watch online video, and over half of those – 36% in all – watch news videos online, according to a new analysis of Pew Research Center survey data. This is up from 40% of U.S. adults who watched or downloaded some kind of online video in 2007, and 26% who watched news videos online.4

Americans Watching Digital News Video
To put those video watching numbers in context, it is worth remembering that YouTube wasn’t founded until 2005 and was purchased by Google in 2006. The first iPhone was released in 2007, and inhome broadband penetration that year was just 47%. Most of this growth, though, occurred between 2007 and 2009. Since then, the rise in online video watching – and news video watching in particular – has slowed considerably. Looking ahead, some analysts expect the continued growth in mobile to spur another round of online video consumption. Indeed, in this survey, while we did not ask which device they watched videos on, smartphone owners were more than twice as likely to watch online videos and online news videos as non-smartphone owners.
% of U.S. Adults

Watched Online Video

Watched News Video

2007 26

40

2009 33

52

63 2013 36

Source: Pew Research Center Surveys 2007, 2009, 2013. Note: In 2007, survey respondents were not asked the more direct question of whether they watch online videos as they were in the 2009 and 2013 surveys. Respondents were asked, though, the various categories of videos that they watch online, including “other.” The 2007 number above reflects the percentage of respondents who said yes to any of the 10 categories. PEW RESEARCH CENTER

In 2007, survey respondents were not directly asked whether they watched online videos as they were in the 2009 and 2013 surveys. Respondents were asked about the various categories of videos that they watch online. The 40% figure reflects the percentage of respondents in 2007 who answered that they watched at least one of the 11 categories of videos, including an “other” category.
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Fully 88% of smartphone owners watch online videos, compared with 35% of those who do not have a smartphone. And more than half (53%) of smartphone owners watch news videos, compared with 18% of those who do not own a smartphone. Again, the survey did not ask which device respondents watched the videos on, so it does not indicate that this is necessarily smartphone news video watching. Other data, though, speak to growth in overall mobile video watching. Business Insider’s research division found that the mobile market’s share of online video traffic grew from 4% in January 2012 to 15% in September 2013.5

Danova, Tony. “Mobile Video Content: This is What People Like to Watch on Their Tablets and Smartphones.” Business Insider Intelligence Report. Dec 11, 2013.
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As is often the case with areas of new technology, younger generations are more likely than older ones to watch videos online. Nine in ten 18-to-29-year-olds (90%) watch online videos, compared with 80% of 30-to-49-year-olds, 49% of 50—to-64-year-olds and just 20% of those 65 or older. What’s more surprising, perhaps, is the degree to which news is in the mix of what they watch. Fully, 48% of all 18-to-29-year-olds in the U.S. watch news videos online, roughly equal to the 49% of 30-to-49-year-olds who watch news videos online and substantially more than those 50 and older.

Young, Educated, Affluent Most Likely to Watch Online News Video
% U.S. Adults Watch Online Video
Total 18-29 30-49 50-64 65+ $30,000 or Less $30-49,000 $50-74,999 $75,000 or More H.S. Grad or Less Some College College or Grad Degree

This speaks to the idea that there could be opportunities in the digital realm for young people to get news at similar rates as their older cohorts – something that has not been the case in most legacy news platforms like newspapers and television.

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Those under 30 also watch a wide range of other kinds of online video. Comedy, music and how-to videos are most popular online, reaching 70% or more of this population each. But, news News Ranks in the Middle of Online outpaces sports videos (38%) and politics Video Watching (32%).
% of U.S. Adults

Two other demographics that stand out in online news video consumption more closely mirror broader news habits: education and income.6 More highly educated Americans are more likely to watch news video. About half of Americans with a college degree or higher watched news video online; this compares with 43% of those who have completed some college and only 22% of those with a high school degree or less.

More than half (57%) of Americans at the PEW RESEARCH CENTER higher end of the income spectrum (more than $75,000 a year in household income) watch news videos online, compared with just 36% of those whose households bring in between $50,000 and $74,999 per year, 34% of those making between $30,000 and $49,999 per year, and 25% of those in households making less than $30,000 per year.

In addition to watching more digital videos, Americans are recording and sharing their own videos. As of July 2013, more than a third (36%) of U.S. adults reported recording videos on their cellphones. And news has become an important part of what they record. New Pew Research survey data find that 12% of social media users post videos of news events that they themselves have taken on social media.7 And 11% of all online news consumers have submitted their own content (including videos, photos, articles or opinion pieces) to news websites or blogs. That amounts to 7% of U.S. adults posting their own news videos on social media and 7% submitting their own content to news sites.

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Pew Research Center. “In Changing News Landscape, Even Television is Vulnerable.” Sept. 27, 2012. In the survey, this question was asked of social networking site users who also got news online.

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While this is still a relatively small segment of the population, the impact has already proved powerful. More and more, citizens are capturing important eyewitness videos around breaking news events. In 2012, a Pew Research Center study found that more than one in three top news videos (39%) on YouTube were posted by citizens. In 2013, user-generated video played an important role around breaking news and in situations of unrest where access is difficult for professional journalists. In the first 24 hours after a deadly tornado slammed into Moore, Okla., around 3 p.m. on May 20, citizen journalists produced a majority of the mostviewed YouTube videos. When Ukrainian protesters took to the streets of Kiev’s Independence Square in February 2014, numerous news organizations (particularly Russia Today) repackaged citizen content from the riots, melding the images into new products. And amid the chaos of the Boston Marathon bombings in April 2013, bystanders recorded the events, as they unfolded – including the initial blasts and the police chase that ended in Watertown, Mass., with one of the suspects dead and the other in custody.

User-Generated Content on Social Network and News Sites
% of Social Network Users Who…* Post photos they took of news events to social networks Post videos they took of news events to social networks % of Online News Consumers Who… Submit their own photos, videos, articles or opinion pieces of a news a news organization or news blog 14% 12

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Source: Pew Research Center, phone survey Feb 27-Mar 2, 2014, N=505 Note: This question was asked of social networking site users who also got news online. PEW RESEARCH CENTER

Portals like YouTube, with one billion monthly viewers, or Vimeo, with 135 million unique viewers, are home to unfiltered and uncurated videos posted by the public, some of which capture news events. 8 More and more, these videos are being incorporated into news reports or onto news websites. But the process for how news organizations and citizens share content is still evolving, with questions about how to provide proper attribution, how to verify the accuracy of videos, and even how to archive them for the future. To that end, a number of startups have emerged – among them Stringwire, Storyful and Storyhunter – that exist to help curate and vet video content created by the public and freelancers, which can then be packaged for the web by news outlets.

Stringwire, acquired by NBC News in 2013, is a startup working to create a frictionless process by which user eyewitnesses can stream a news event from their cellphones straight to NBC editorial staff, which can then broadcast relevant content on the air or on the web. Storyful, launched in 2010 and purchased by News Corp. in 2013 for $25 million, works to verify citizen video uploaded to the web or to news sites. The company also secures licenses for news video it finds around the web and then sells those licenses. Storyhunter is a digital production studio that works with its network of independent and freelance video journalists to vet and produce high-quality news video. These and others build off earlier video curation and editing services, such as CNN’s iReport, which has gathered user-generated video, photo and narrative content, some of which have appeared on broadcasts.

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The Digital Video Advertising Market
The growth in the digital video advertising market can still be explained in part by the law of small numbers: It is still a relatively new entrant, and makes up a small fraction of all digital Digital Video Revenue Continues to advertising. But the data also suggest that Grow there is still a great deal of room for growth, In billions particularly in the mobile realm. To fully understand the state of digital video advertising and its potential for news, it is helpful to start with the entire advertising picture. Total advertising revenue amounted to $171.3 billion in 2013, according to estimates provided by eMarketer. Digital advertising accounted for a quarter of that (or $42.6 billion).
$42.58 $36.80 $31.99 $26.04 Total Digital Advertising

2012 2013 Digital video advertising amounts to just a Source: eMarketer. small piece (9.7%) of all digital ad revenue – PEW RESEARCH CENTER an estimated $4.15 billion. It accounts for an even smaller share of all advertising revenue across platforms – just 2.4%.Still, digital video advertising is growing rapidly at 43.5% year over year. By 2017, eMarketer projects that digital video advertising will make up 15% of the total digital advertising market.

$1.42 2010

$2.00 2011

$2.89

$4.15

Digital Video

Indeed, much of this growth can be attributed to the price of digital video ads compared to more traditional kinds of online advertising like banners. One of most widely used metrics for measuring the price of a digital ad is CPM, or the cost per thousand views of the ad. And while some prefer other engagement based metrics like cost per click or cost per completion (where the ad only counts if the user actually watches it), CPM can still speak to broad differences in value for various types of digital ads.

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An analysis by Credit Suisse, a financial services and asset management company, puts the average CPM for a digital video advertisement at $24.60.9 That is somewhere between five and 10 times the average cost of a more traditional display ad.10 No firms break out these revenue estimates specifically for news. But a deep look at the playing field suggests that for organizations producing news video, this may be a difficult revenue environment. Pew Research has already documented in previous State of the News Media reports the degree to which online advertising over all – and more relevant to news, display advertising – quickly became dominated by a few big players. In the display ad market, about half of all the ad dollars go to five companies: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL. The remaining 50% is what’s left for news organizations and thousands of other publishers. There is not yet an equivalent revenue pie for digital video, but the analytics firm comScore tracks which companies serve the most digital video ads to web users. These data, along with other indicators, offer three key findings.

First is the degree to which YouTube (ranked No. 1 here as a Google site) already has a strong 1,977,091 34.7 hold on the market, especially since it serves up Source: *AOL bought Adap.tv in September 2013, the Adap.tv its own ads through the Google ad network. figures above are an average of December-September 2013 and Separate data from eMarketer project that the AOL numbers are an average for the entire year, with Adap.tv added in for October, November and December 2013. YouTube will have generated $850 million in PEW RESEARCH CENTER video advertising alone in 2013. That amounts to 20.5% of the $4.15 billion digital video advertising market. While it is up only slightly, from 19.7% in 2012, eMarketer projects YouTube’s percentage to grow to 23% by 2015. The second point revolves around the role of ad networks – the middle players in the digital ad space between the advertisers such as Honda or Prudential and the content publishers such as ESPN or The New York Times. AOL is largely on the list because of its purchase of the ad network

9 Credit Suisse divided the digital video ad market into three tiers: Indirect ($18.60 CPM), Midtier ($25.00), and Premium ($32.80). 10 Estimates for the average CPM of a display ad can vary widely according the sample used to derive the average. Estimates from Turn put the average at $1.06 in 2013. Estimates from Forrester put it at around $2.66.

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Adap.tv in 2013. And the remaining three – BrightRoll, LiveRail and SpotXchange – are all ad networks in their own right. The ads are sold by the ad networks, which then share the revenue with the host publisher. News organizations, in other words, need to share revenue with these ad networks. In addition, news organizations compete for interest from these networks with all kinds of other publishers such as Hulu or ESPN, many of which have higher market appeal.

Source, comScore, based on Desktop/Laptop only Home and Work locations PEW RESEARCH CENTER

Perhaps most important, Facebook is only barely in this space. Facebook tested its first attempt at a video ad on Dec. 19, 2013.11 Consider that in the display advertising market, Facebook quickly became the top display ad selling company. In 2009, five years after its launch, Facebook was second to Yahoo, generating around $560 million in display ad revenue to Yahoo’s $1.26 billion. By 2013, Facebook was the No. 1 display video ad company in the U.S., generating $3.17 billion to Yahoo’s $1.27 billion. What’s more, when it comes to views of online video, Facebook already ranks near the top. It’s not that news is absent from Facebook or YouTube. To the contrary, half of Facebook users get news there at least sometimes, according to 2013 Pew Research data, and one in five YouTube users get news on that platform. CNN’s YouTube channel alone has more than 400,000 followers. But, in addition to the ad network sharing, news producers must share revenues with these distribution partners, which skims off a portion of the totals that were small to begin with compared with those of legacy platforms. Another drag on the incentive to innovate comes from the fact that for legacy producers of video news content, the vast majority of their revenue still comes from television. Fully 37% of total cable revenue, 81% of network revenue and 94% of local TV revenue come from legacy advertising. In addition, the cable news networks generate a substantial portion of their total revenue from fees received by cable providers, such as Comcast, which are then passed along to consumers in their
Reed Albergotti, Suzanne Vranica and Ben Fritz. “Facebook’s Video Ads Risk Alienating Users.” The Wall Street Journal.” Dec 17, 2013.

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cable bills. Indeed, while all three of the cable networks offer live streaming on their sites, they also all require users to sign in with their cable provider if they want to view the live TV stream on the web – to verify the user is already paying for a cable subscription.

CNN.com Live Stream Login Screen

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Developments in Online News Video Content
Even if the economic benefits are uncertain, digital video will clearly be a part of how consumers get content, including news, in the coming years. From live feeds like a presidential speech, to user-generated content around breaking news, to original video packages produced for the web, to clips or downloads of content first aired in legacy television, the options for online video are now vast. So how are news organizations positioning themselves to be a part of the growing – but already crowded – digital video landscape? What kinds of content are being developed, and by whom? Some news organizations have already created a name for themselves in this space. In 2006, the first News & Documentary Emmy Award went to a nonbroadcast news organization – the Washington Post – for its video coverage of Hurricane Katrina. In 2007, CNN and YouTube partnered to sponsor presidential primary debates, and the 2008 presidential election became the first one in which consumers could watch live streams of the candidate debates and vote returns on outlets like MSNBC.com, foxnews.com and CNN.com. Storyhunter, a website launched in 2012 by two professional video journalists, has completed 100 videos, established a network of more than 1,500 professional freelancers worldwide and signed media partnerships with Yahoo and AOL. As a startup that bridges the gap between content providers and publishers, Storyhunter vets the journalists and provides fact checking, editorial expertise and a virtual workspace. Some developments in 2013 include:  HuffPost Live. In August 2013, HuffPost Live – one of the more ambitious digital-only news video efforts built around hosts chatting with guests – celebrated its anniversary. According to The Huffington Post, 2 million viewers a month watch the live stream of the channel and 13 million more watch video content on HuffPost Live on demand.12 The company continues to fine-tune its video offerings. In 2013, the site scaled back its daytime live programming from 12 hours to eight hours. It expanded internationally by launching the WorldPost (but in doing so, scaled back some of the outlet’s domestic staffing).

Vice Media. More recently, Vice Media – a multimedia company aimed at younger audiences – has been rapidly Vice News expanding both its news operations and its focus on video. The company has for some time distributed its video content through an HBO show and licensing deals with other TV networks, along with its website, mobile app and YouTube channel. As of early 2014, Vice was averaging 77 million monthly video views. And in February, the company launched a news portal on its website – in beta – that, according the news reports, will include 50 posts a day in PEW RESEARCH CENTER various formats, including live streaming and edited video. The company told the Pew Research Center that it was in the process of hiring young producers who were “capturing and covering news stories in an

immersive documentary style that resonates with our audience” and would do so, in part, using newer technologies like drones and Google Glass.

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The Texas Tribune. In the fall of 2013, running off the energy from its January live streaming of Wendy Davis’s filibuster against an abortion measure in the Texas Legislature that drew national The Texas Tribune attention, The Texas Tribune held a successful Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for the purchase of equipment to enable it to stream live video coverage of the 2014 Texas governor’s race. It took the Tribune just over three weeks to surpass its goal of $60,000 and by the end of the year it had the equipment in hand. The first live-streaming event – an interview with Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst –took place on Jan. 16, 2014. Subsequent live-streamed conversations with PEW RESEARCH CENTER candidates for political office were held on Jan. 30 and Feb. 4, and The Tribune has committed to provide live video coverage throughout the 2014 election cycle. The nonprofit newspaper told Pew Research that it had been utilizing the live-stream feature once or twice a week, along with events, and that the audience reaction had been strong. NBC News. In 2013 NBC News made several investments in the digital and, more specifically, mobile video market. The first, in August 2013, was a company called Stringwire. The company allows users to upload real-time video using their mobile devices, and NBC News plans to use it as something akin to CNN’s iReport, having citizens on the ground as events happen upload

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their video using Stringwire to NBC News.13 Second, in January 2014, NBC News took a minority stake in a company called NowThis News, a move to help NBC News compete in the mobile video market. The company produces short – in most cases very short, at 15 seconds – news videos.14  Bloomberg TV. In late 2012, the financial news company announced plans to create a digital video desk in a bid to expand its production of video content for delivery on multiple platforms. And in December 2013, Bloomberg further expanded its digital reach with the introduction of an app for Apple TV that enables access to financial programming via both a live feed and on-demand videos. 4CornersTV. A project of Ballantine Communications in Colorado, 4CornersTV is a local online TV channel aimed at a particular demographic – 30-to-45-year-olds. The channel launched in early February 2014. Newsy. In December 2013 Scripps purchased Newsy, a startup out of Columbia, Mo. Newsy is a website (and app) that aggregates video content from around the web. The key feature is that the service features video content surrounding a single story. Newsy produces video content that collects video from various sources and packages it together into a single piece, often anchored by a Newsy employee. The video features links to all of the original video featured in the story.

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While many of these recent developments have come from news outlets native to the digital space, the biggest source of news video by far remains television – local and national broadcast, along with cable. More than half (57%) of U.S. adults say they get news on television, according to Pew Research survey data. Local ranks first, with 24 million tuning in to late-night broadcasts, according to Nielsen Media Research. Pew Research examined the homepages of a mix of 32 local TV websites in a range of markets across the country, looking at the quantity of video content they feature, the availability of streaming content and how that video content is hosted, as well as the presence of mobile apps and YouTube channels.

The findings reveal that, at least within this mix of sites, video is a regular part of their digital offerings, although the extent of video usage varies widely. Most of these local TV news websites have mobile apps, while about half offer live streams of their TV broadcasts, and half have channels on YouTube. (It is also worth noting that the differences across these sites do not seem tied in any way to their network affiliation. Variations, in other words, were seen within the ABC-affiliated stations in this study as well as the CBS and NBC affiliate groups.)

All but four of the 32 local TV stations studied (all four of them in the smallest market) included video on their website. On average, these videos accounted for 42% of homepage story links, including links to live news feeds. But the degree to which video defined their site varied a great deal, from 92% of homepage story links on one site (WEAR in Mobile, Ala.) to just 6% on another (KDFX in Palm Springs, Calif.).

Featured Video Section at KHOU

All the local TV websites featuring video set this content PEW RESEARCH CENTER off in a specific part of the website, and in some cases, more than one space. Many sites used a layout similar to that of KHOU (Houston), where the page features a “video” section in the top navigation as well as a “featured video” section.

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Nearly half of the local TV outlets studied – 14 out of 32 – included live streams. During the time period studied, these were simply feeds from the local broadcast, produced in a TV studio, as opposed to being made for the web (with one exception). Offering live video streams carries an additional cost – one that fewer stations have taken on. Live Live Stream of WCSC streaming requires more bandwidth than streaming other videos, and with data caps becoming more common among broadband providers, stations may feel users do not want to incur those limits on web usage.1 The decision to stream broadcasts online (or on mobile, discussed below) also can have some downsides for local TV stations. The most glaring is that PEW RESEARCH CENTER if users decide to shift their watching to these live streams, then the stations will lose those eyeballs for their television ads, a traditionally more lucrative type of advertising.

In addition to having a dedicated video section, all but one of the sites in the sample exclusively hosted their video content themselves, as opposed to using an outside hosting service like YouTube and posting the videos on their websites. Even for the ABC affiliate in Elmira, N.Y. WENY, which featured some videos that were hosted on YouTube, many of the video clips found on the homepage were hosted by the site itself. This indicates that even smaller local TV stations have invested in hosting their video content on the web themselves. Hosting video is expensive, especially if audiences move their news viewing away from the television to the internet. Nevertheless, hosting one’s own content also allows for far more flexibility and allows the organization to keep all the revenue from any video advertising (revenue they have to share for content on YouTube or other sites).

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The vast majority of these video news organizations embraced mobile. Fully 26 of the 32 stations had an app available in the iTunes Store, and 25 had an app available in the Google Play Store. The video offerings of these apps, however, differed. Twenty-five of the 32 stations had apps in the Google Play Store, and 24 offered the option to watch video. An additional 13 offered the option to watch live broadcasts, which is more costly for the news producer and requires more powerful devices on the part of the user. In addition, of the 26 that had apps available in the iTunes Store, 23 offered the ability to watch video, and 12 offered the ability to live stream video.

Mobile Live Stream of WSBTV

Having a dedicated channel on YouTube requires staff to maintain the content. Among local TV stations studied here, most have decided to make that investment. Eighteen of the 32 local TV sites had channels on YouTube and posted their video content there. All of the national outlets also had YouTube channels.

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While 18 of the 32 local TV sites had YouTube channels, subscribers to these channels varied sharply. The number of subscribers ranged from just over 4,000 at WTNH in Connecticut to only eight at KURL in Montana. Even among many of the local TV stations that did have a YouTube channel, many appeared inactive. To put those subscribers in perspective with national news outlets, CNN had 408,675 subscribers, and Vice Media had 4.4 million.

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Methodology
The data for this report were collected in three main parts: original survey work conducted by the Pew Research Center, an original content audit of websites of local and national television news outlets, and secondary aggregation and analysis by Pew Research Center of data generated by other researchers or organizations. For the secondary analyses, original sources are cited throughout the report. We studied the data closely to determine where elements reinforced each other and where there were apparent contradictions or gaps. In doing so, the Pew Research Center’s Journalism Project endeavored to determine the value and validity of each data set. That in many cases involved going back to the sources that collected the research originally. Where data conflicted, we have included all relevant sources and tried to explain their differences, either in footnotes or in the narrative. We also sought insight from outside experts. Those readers raised questions, offered arguments and questioned data where they saw fit. For the two areas of original research, detailed methods follow below.

Digital News Participation, Omnibus Survey, Feb. 27 - March 2, 2014
The Princeton Survey Research Associates International (or PSRAI) February 2014 Omnibus Week 4 survey obtained telephone interviews with a nationally representative sample of 1,002 adults living in the continental United States. Telephone interviews were conducted by landline (500) and cellphone (502, including 272 without a landline phone). The survey was conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International. Interviews were done in English and Spanish by Princeton Data Source from Feb. 27 to March 2, 2014. Statistical results are weighted to correct known demographic discrepancies. The margin of sampling error for the complete set of weighted data is ± 3.6 percentage points.

Online Video Watching
2013, Omnibus Survey, July 25-28, 2013 The PSRAI July 2013 Omnibus Week 4 obtained telephone interviews with a nationally representative sample of 1,003 adults living in the continental United States. Telephone interviews were conducted by landline (501) and cell phone (502, including 230 without a landline phone). The survey was conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International. Interviews were done in English by Princeton Data Source from July 25 to 28, 2013. Statistical results are weighted

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23 PEW RESEARCH CENTER

to correct known demographic discrepancies. The margin of sampling error for the complete set of weighted data is ± 3.6 percentage points. 2009 Omnibus, June 18-21, 2009 The 2009 June Omnibus Survey obtained telephone interviews with a nationally representative sample of 1,005 adults living in the continental United States. The survey was conducted by Princeton Survey Research International. The interviews were conducted in English by Princeton Data Source from June 18 to 21, 2009. Statistical results are weighted to correct known demographic discrepancies. The margin of sampling error for the complete set of weighted data is ±3.6%.

2007 Tracking Survey, Feb. 15-17, 2007 This report is based on the findings of a daily tracking survey on Americans' use of the internet. The results in this report are based on data from telephone interviews conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates from Feb. 15 to March 7, 2007, among a sample of 2,200 adults, 18 and older. For results based on the total sample, one can say with 95% confidence that the error attributable to sampling and other random effects is ±2.3 percentage points. For results based on internet users, the margin of sampling error is ±2.8 percentage points. In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting telephone surveys may introduce some error or bias into the findings of opinion polls.

Pew Research Center staff audited 39 websites for the content analysis portion of this study -- 32 local TV stations and 7 national news outlets. The sites were chosen to reflect local TV stations in small, medium and large markets, in all five regions of the country to represent affiliates of all major networks. They were:
Station or Channel WFLD Chicago KHOU Houston WTNH New Haven, Connecticut WDSU New Orleans KHON Honolulu WCSC Charleston, South Carolina KTKA Topeka,

Each site was studied for a number of different elements. The total sample was divided into thirds (one third for each researcher on the project). A third of the sites were then examined beginning on Friday, Dec. 13; the next third on Monday, Dec. 16; the next third on Thursday, Jan. 2; then Tuesday, Jan. 7, and finally on Wednesday, Jan. 15. The purpose was to create a constructed fiveday “week” spread out over the course of five weeks. The goal was to code each site on the list twice and to correct for any changes to the site or large news events that occurred during that time period. 1) Researchers counted the total number of links and the total number of videos on the homepage. The percentage of video was then calculated by dividing the number of videos by the total number of links present on the homepage. 2) Did the site have a dedicated video section on the homepage? Researchers looked at the homepage of each site to determine if the site had a dedicated section devoted to video content. 3) Was the video on the channel’s website being hosted by another service, for example YouTube, Vimeo or Dailymotion, or was it hosted by the channel itself? (All of the channels studied here it was the latter, they hosted the video themselves.) 4) Could the video be accessed in any of the following ways: iPhone app, Android app, Windows mobile app, BlackBerry app, iPad app, on Hulu, on Vimeo, on Dailymotion, on YouTube, or on Ustream? This variable reflects if the station or channel had its content on any other outside sites. 5) Was there an option to stream live broadcasts on the station or channel’s website? If the option was available did it require any kind of login or registration to do so?

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Data caps are limits imposed by broadband internet companies like Comcast and most wireless providers like Verizon that limit the amount of data an individual can use monthly.